Memory Lane
by Lin'Dary
Summary: Clara has lived so many lives in so many places. What if she could remember them?
1. A Room With A View

**AN: Sometimes Clara tries to remember all the other soufflés that followed her recipe.**

The Doctor seemed to be asleep. That couldn't possibly be right. The Doctor never slept. He almost never even closed his eyes. Yet there he was, snoring softly in the chair beside his console. Clara couldn't blame him for it – it had been a very long day. The Doctor had rewritten the last four hundred years of his personal history, saved his planet from destruction, saved the Earth from hostile invasion, and met up with his old self twice. Most of that was pretty normal, but two planets saved in one day would tire anyone out!

So she let her friend sleep. She even found a blanket to cover him with, tucking him in all the way up to his enormous chin. He shifted slightly and mumbled something incomprehensible, and the girl held her breath. _Please, please don't wake him up… he needs this._ Those old eyes stayed shut, and the sound of deep breathing filled the silent console room. Clara let herself relax. Good. There would be more adventures waiting for them after he slept himself out. _I wonder what he dreams about…_

The TARDIS was strangely quiet without the Doctor's voice rambling on about the places they could go or the constant spin and click of console controls. Clara didn't mind too much though – the silence had a friendliness to it as well. The TARDIS seemed to have come to like her, which was a big improvement over where that relationship had started. Might have something to do with Clara saving the Doctor's timeline, or directing the very first Doctor to pick her instead of a different TARDIS. Without her, boy and his box would never have met. She grinned and patted the console, "Keep an eye on him, won't you, old friend?" The machine hummed quietly, and Clara was reminded of a cat purring. Or maybe a dragon.

She followed the railing down the stairs and into the corridors of the machine, letting her subconscious guide her feet rather than having any set plan. She didn't often get the chance to do this, but it was her favorite way to explore the TARDIS. Somehow she always found her way to exactly what she wanted, even if she wasn't sure what it was she wanted until she had arrived. Probably the TARDIS herself had more than a little to do with that. This time she walked past door after door after door, peaking in here and there at the wonders to be found, but venturing inside none. Finally after a long long while, the corridor ended with a doorway.

It was so unlike the bland metal doors that lined the rest of the long corridor that when Clara caught sight of it, she just stared for a few moments. An old wooden door, worn but well cared for, hung from polished metal hinges in a frame that was slightly too large, leaving gaps. Golden light poured out from the edges and through the small heart shaped hole carved out of the door at eye level. The scents of cinnamon and butter floated down the hallway towards her, and Clara could swear she heard birdsong.

This was the place she had been travelling towards, she knew. Stepping forward and taking hold of an ancient brass door knob, she pushed into the room. Immediately she was enveloped with warmth and a rush of memory as she stepped into the brightest, friendliest, most homely kitchen she had ever seen. A large wooden table with corners rounded down with use filled the center of the room, ringed with half a dozen mismatched chairs. Cupboards, shelves, and counters lined the three walls opposite her, interrupted only by the sink, stove-top oven, and the fridge. All these spaces were filled with cooking tools and spices, mixed in with cross-stitched poems and small wooden animals. The uncharitable might call the space cluttered or cramped. Clara though it was rather comfy. She half expected her grandmother to come bustling around the corner, stirring some great bowl that would be a delicious dinner in just another hour or so.

She stepped into the room, letting the door close. Turning to look behind her, she saw where the light was coming from. A pair of massive windows flanked the entrance, looking out over a sprawling field of red grass. A brilliant sun was setting in an orange sky behind the gently rolling hills. It was that magical hour where all the sun's rays turn from white to sleepy yellow like a droopy eyed child. Her breath caught in her throat as she gazed over that incredible landscape.

Gallifrey.

She had seen the planet at its worst – war torn and dying. An entire race screaming as destruction came to silence their voices forever. This was another world entirely. Beautiful and strange and alive. So inexplicably alive. The wind through the tall grass was like a quiet voice telling her to run away, chase the sun, see over the horizon! No wonder the Time Lords had such an urge to explore, evolving on a world like this one. Clara opened the door, hoping that perhaps the TARDIS would shift something and allow her to find that field of crimson grain, but was faced by the hallway again. Leaving was not an option, not yet anyway, so she tried a window. Both were locked. Damn. Probably meant the scene through the windows was just a projection. She turned back to the kitchen.

A quick check of the pantries and fridge revealed a well-stocked kitchen, and more surprisingly most of it was recognizably from Earth. It occurred to her that perhaps the TARDIS filled the shelves with the current occupants in mind.

Clara stood back for a moment. She was hungry. The last thing she remembered having was that cup of tea she'd had with the three Doctors in the museum, and she's had nothing for several hours before that. How long was it since her last meal then?

Too long probably. She went for the apron she'd seen hanging from a hook beside the door and smiled when she discovered that it fit her perfectly. A bowl and a wooden spoon clattered as she set them onto a counter top, running to the fridge for eggs. Time for another soufflé.

The recipe was so ingrained in her memory, she didn't even have to think as she mixed ingredients and poured out the concoction into a pan. Instead Clara let her mind follow whatever line of thought suggested itself, wandering through the paths of her brain like her feet wandering through the corridors of the TARDIS.

Looking out over the expanse of red wilderness, Clara's thoughts meandered. She wondered if Gallifrey had had squirrels. Surely they must have had something akin to a squirrel at least – small furry woodland creature. She wondered what they might have looked like. What color would they have been? What about domestic animals? Did Gallifreyan children have pets of any kind? What would one have looked like? She resolved to ask the Doctor about it when he woke up. Perhaps it wouldn't be as painful now that he knew his home had not burned in the flames of the Moment.

A tiny voice in her mind, just behind her right ear, whispered that she didn't need to ask the Doctor. She had been to Gallifrey before – _did she not remember?_ — in fact she had lived there. A million fragments of her had scattered across the universe, and at least one had landed on that distant orange globe, arriving just in time to be in that garage of faulty TARDIS capsules and help him find his match.

_No, I can't remember. _All those sights she had seen and all the lives she had lived, and all she could recall was a few vague images. She had tried to retrieve those memories, if nothing else to help her understand the Doctor's past, but to no avail. Clara finished pouring the soufflé and slid it into the oven, brushing aside the thought. It annoyed her that it had been her greatest journey through time and space, and she could remember almost none of it.

_You can remember._

Clara froze. It was that voice again, and she had suddenly realized it was not her own. Telepathy? But who could it be? There was only she and the Doctor in the TARDIS, and the Doctor was asleep. Surely the shielding that protected them from the Vortex blocked a simple little telepathic message. So who could be speaking to her?

_I am the TARDIS. Normally I would be unable to communicate with you. You see, I exist in several more dimensions than you are capable of understanding, but this place is designed to compress a part of my consciousness, limiting me to the four dimensions of your perception and allowing me to speak to you. What do you think?_

This was weird. The TARDIS couldn't speak. That was just plain impossible, wasn't it? Was she going mad? Clara decided if she was going crazy, she might as well take it all the way and talk to herself out loud. "I don't understand most of what that means, but I think I get what the result is. Does the Doctor know about this place?"

_No. It think if I told him I would never get him out of here._

Clara laughed, "Yeah, you're probably right."She closed the oven door, then set a timer and took a seat at the table. "So why a kitchen?"

_I thought it was rather quaint, and a little ordinary is not always bad. Would you like a cup of tea while you wait for your soufflé to burn?_

"Hey!" Clara huffed at the empty room, secretly wishing there was someone there to scowl at.

_Sorry, comes with the territory when you talk to a being of pure time energy._

"Well since you offered, I would like some tea. And maybe some biscuits since my soufflé is going to be a failure. Again." She grimaced, but her face lifted as a cup of tea and a plate of snicker doodle cookies popped into existence in the center of the table, "Thank you."

_Not every soufflé you make ends up inedible. I can think of several that were delicious. Or maybe will be delicious?_

"Must be 'will'. The only soufflés I can remember being any good were the ones I made with my mother."

_Then again, you cannot remember most of your lives, so that does not mean much, does it?_

A twinge of annoyance made her frown. She grabbed a cookie and bit into it grumpily.

_Oh, that rubs you the wrong way, does it?_

"I told you, I can't remember! I've tried before, loads of times!"

_Puny human mind trying to access a great mystery of the universe without any telepathic training? Like trying to swim to the bottom of the ocean in just your bathing suit._

"Puny human mind!? Get that from the Doctor, did you? You know, I'm pretty tired of Time Lords and their machines dissing humans. We may not have brains the size of planets, but that doesn't make us incompetent or –"

_I can help you remember._

A swirl of emotions flooded Clara. A long moment passed. The oven hummed in its heating coils. A bird chirped outside the virtual windows. Something very like a wind chime tinkled as a breeze swept along the grass. Still she said nothing, until finally:

"How?"

_Easy answer? I can guide you and protect your mind from an overload. To continue the diving analogy, I can be your submarine._

Immediately, the well-known Beetle's song jumped into Clara's mind, and she pictured the TARDIS as a little cartoon boat, the Doctor's face pressed against a window as he peered eagerly into the surrounding waters. She giggled.

_What? No, stop that! I am NOT a tiny yellow submarine! I am BLUE, and a police box, thanks very much, and I have NO intention of ever changing that._

"I thought you got stuck as a police box because the chameleon circuit busted?"

_I know. I like to let my thief believe that._

Clara smiled faintly, then let quietness prevail for another moment.

_Well?_

The woman took a deep, steadying breath before replying, "Let's try it."

_Good! Prepare for dive. Prepare for dive!_

"Are you sure you don't secretly wish you were a submarine?"

_Shut up._


	2. A Hallway Between Lives

**AN: I have some followers! Very exciting! Thank you BSwifty1997 for the review. I'm excited for this story too! I don't promise scheduled updates. Life is not so organized as all that. I describe the school for part of this scene, but I honestly could not remember some of the details of its appearance, so I made them up. I like the way my version sounds though.**

**So the BBC owns Doctor Who. But who owns the BBC?**

The birds sang outside the holographic windows. Their voices were familiar to Clara's terrestrial ears, but their melodies were indescribably alien. Gallifreyan avian life. She wondered if they even looked like Earth birds. It sent bright shudders down her spine to think that in some other life, these strange songs and their singers had been more commonplace to her than robins and blue jays.

She still sat at the worn table, clutching her cup of tea. A churning mass of excitement filled the pit of her stomach, far more violent than any butterflies. She took a few breaths in an effort to steady herself.

"So how do we do this?" Clara spoke aloud to the empty room, her eyes locked on the fiery landscape beyond the window.

_Simply. Close your eyes._

Clara obeyed. It was strange though. With her eyes shut tight, she still saw the kitchen, in a way. Like a hazy afterimage of colorful smoky outlines traced across her eyelids, she could make out the vague shapes of familiar objects. She directed her weird smoke gaze to her own hands, holding them out to examine them. Purple and blue swirls of blurry light that slowly shifted through green and yellow outlined what she supposed were her fingers and palms. Clara began to shake. Something had to be very wrong here. The possibility of her own insanity crept back into the corner of her brain.

"What is this?"

_Welcome to your mind's eye._

"What? How is that -"

_The mind's eye is the place where you visualize ideas and images. If you aren't actively imagining any particular thing, it usually just contains this sort of vague awareness of whatever space you happen to occupy. That is what you are seeing._

"But I'm not supposed to actually see what I imagine, it's just in my brain! How can I be seeing this?" Clara waved her hand at the ghostly mirage of the kitchen, her movement leaving the now orange and red smoke trailing in arcs across the air.

_I am sending the signals of the imagery directly to your visual processing centers, instead of letting them wander around your grey matter like lost puzzle pieces._

"So you are playing doctor with my brain right now. Great!"

_Don't panic, it's not permanent and it will have no lasting side effects. Once I let the signals go back to their original directionless wandering, it will be like nothing happened._

"But now there are two conflicting signals coming into my brain at once. What happens if I open my eyes? Let the other signal come through?"

_Why don't you try it? _

Clara bit her lip, then cracked her eyes open ever so slowly. The smoke trails remained, superimposed over the real objects they represented.

"Wow."

_Your brain processes both at once. Interesting. Just so you know, I will be redirecting signals for your other senses as we go deeper, but probably just gradually. For now, close your eyes again._

The normal kitchen disappeared as her eyelids dropped, leaving her with just the ghost outline of the space. "Why can't I keep my eyes open?"

_It will start to get confusing when you visualize something other than this room. Now, imagine a long hallway lined with doors._

Clara began to form the image, and the rainbow trails of glowing mist danced through the air, abandoning their forms to take the shapes of doors, knobs, floor, walls, and ceiling. The new picture pulsed with shifting colors, still hazy from its recent creation.

_Good! But the more detail you add, the easier this will be._

She wasn't entirely sure what "this" referred to, but Clara decided not to question the powerful telepathic being with psychic powers currently controlling the basic functions of her brain. She pictured the hallways at her school. There were long lines of thick metal doors painted a dark green. Along the left hand wall, the doors had large glass windows installed above them, reaching from the top of the door to the tall ceiling, which let rays of late afternoon sun drench the space. Smooth walls painted a creamy caramel brown stretched into the distance. The floor was a mosaic of white and brown tiles. As she added details from her memory to the image, the shadowy outline behind her eyelids was filled out, spreading in swirls of color like watercolor paints across a primed canvas, darkening with each stroke of her mental brush.

At last the hallway was complete, and Clara felt as though she were gazing at a photograph of her school. Actually, even in its completed state, the mental image didn't quite seem real. There was a roughness around the edges that reminded Clara of a sketch or drawing, or perhaps a dream.

_Not bad for your first time. Smart to pick something familiar to you._

"Thanks! But why did you have me do this?"

_Imagine that this is your memory. Behind any door, you will find and experience a memory sequence. Some sequences are more familiar to you than others. Some sequences are less pleasant than others. They are all your memories, however._

"But there are so many doors here!"

_Yes. You have had many memories, even just in the one life you know of now._

"So how do I know which one to enter? Do I just start opening doors?"

_No, don't be silly. That's what you've been doing. This time, you will have help._

Something pulled at her skirt, and Clara looked down. She couldn't see anything that would have caused the tugging, however she realized that she was standing inside the imagined hallway instead of sitting in the kitchen, even though she could still feel the chair beneath her and the mug of tea between her hands. But how was that -? Her reaction was to blink in surprise, but she just ended up briefly scrunching her eyes tightly shut since, of course, they were already closed. Immediately she felt foolish.

"I picture myself inside the hallway, so I am."

_That's right. Good catch__._

"I'm impressed." A voice spoke from behind Clara, and she jumped, turning to face the source. A young girl stood in the center of the hallway, just inches away. The child, no more than 7 or 8, appeared to be anatomically identical to a human girl. However, her skin was not any natural shade of brown and pink – it was a deep blue, and her eyes glowed like golden trails of regeneration energy, or more probably, the heart of the TARDIS.

"What do you think?" the girl spun around, making her standard issue school uniform skirt swirl around her knees. "I'm projecting an image of myself onto your brain, but normally I don't have much of a corporeal form, so I made this up. I think it will be easier to help you this way. Physical guides are more reliable. Probably."

"Um, actually it's a little unsettling. Do you think you could make the eyes less – glowy?"

TARDIS girl pouted, "But I really like the eyes! Rose got to have them! Before she nearly destroyed the universe…" She had started staring into the middle distance, recalling something, but now she glanced back at Clara; "I'll change them if it'll help."

Immediately the light dissipated, leaving the TARDIS with golden irises. She blinked. "Oh, well now I look like one of those little aliens from Platform One! That was an interesting day. The Doctor got a parking ticket for me." The girl giggled, and the sound reminded Clara more of the wheezing of the engines at take-off than a human voice.

"Why did you choose to be a child?"

The girl locked eyes with Clara, and her breath caught in her throat. For a moment, Clara was lost in that gaze. She had thought the Doctor's eyes were old. She had been so very wrong. These eyes were as ageless as the universe, their owner having seen all of time stretched out before and behind her from the moment of her conception like a tapestry of stars, space, planets, people, beginnings and endings. For one stuttering heartbeat, Clara could almost see it too.

_The universe is massive and full of wonder. Who would not choose to see it with the awe of a child?_

The TARDIS girl clapped her hands, swiftly cutting the tension between them like a rubber band; "So! Back to the adventure at hand. I've never really gotten to go on the adventures before. Except that one time, I suppose, but still! This should be fun!"

Clara shook the moment off with more difficulty, but managed to give the strange blue child a smile, "Ok, where do we begin?"

"At the beginning, of course. Come on!" she reached out, beckoning Clara follow. The young woman did so, slipping her hand into her guide's much smaller blue hand. The pair began walking down the hallway, passing by dozens of identical doors as they traveled farther into the limitless corridor. After what felt like mere minutes, they had passed more doors than Clara would have believed if she hadn't given up counting after 500.

"How are we going so fast?" she asked before a second thought occurred to her, "And am I wandering around the TARDIS back in reality?!"

The child scoffed, "No, of course not, silly! The farther you engross yourself into your mind's eye and the more I connect your senses to it, the more you can control this place and the less you are aware of the outside world. At some point, you stop consciously controlling your body. You haven't physically moved since you tried to blink earlier," she snickered a bit, glancing up at Clara, "That was pretty funny, actually." Clara just raised an eyebrow at her, which only made the TARDIS girl laugh harder. A few deep breaths later, she had found her composure once again, "Anyway, we can walk so fast because you believe we can. We could fly if you decided and imagined it."

"Really?"

The girl shrugged, "It's your mind."

Clara thought about that as they continued to walk. She could do anything here. Any image she imagined could appear. Literally anything… A thought suggested itself to her, pushing out from the back of her mind. What about…? But she quickly stuffed that idea back into her subconscious. Not with the TARDIS also here. That would just be embarrassing.

"Ah ha! Here we go!" her hand was suddenly abandoned as the girl bounced excitedly up to a door just a little ways ahead. Someone had painted a large red X over the green, and what might have been a name was outlined below it in the same color:

_OS_

_The Maker_

Above the X, a small note had been written in a child's handwriting:

_Note to self – start here!_

_-Love, TARDIS_

_PS – Have fun!_

Clara threw a quizzical look at the little girl next to her, who just shrugged. "I already know where it was, but needed some way to find it again. There is a lot of hallway here!" The young woman rolled her eyes, but smiled briefly. Then she squared her shoulders and touched the door knob. It seemed to hum under her hand, and she swallowed, suddenly nervous. What was she going to find on the other side? Was she really ready for this? Another glance to her small companion revealed that she was grinning enormously, excitement radiating off her in waves. It was infectious, and Clara soon found a matching expression spreading across her face, chasing away her doubt. "Ready?"

"Always! Just open the door!"

"Ok. 3… 2… 1…"

The knob twisted easily, and Clara stepped forward into an explosion of light.


	3. Familiar Rebirth

**AN: Thank you for bearing with me through set up. Now we can get to the good stuff. **

**Reviewers are like angels – both kinds. They are lovely when they arrive and bless your writing, and they only move when you aren't looking. I'll shut my eyes, promise.**

_A newborn cries out for the first time. The world is a blurry, icky mess. Too bright for eyes so young, and too noisy. Voices that were always muffled before have found focus, and that's scary and loud. The air feels wrong. It doesn't support floating the way the warm fluid that was home for so long did. Her body is so heavy without the buoyancy of all that water. And what's this? An unfamiliar sensation of a foreign object coming in contact with skin! Nothing ever touches her skin, unless she accidentally brushes against the walls of her mother's stomach or her cord. This is outrageous! Why did she ever want to come out of the safety of her mother's belly in the first place? The world is a terrible place! She wants to return to the dark and muted comfort of the womb. She cries and cries and cries and can she please just go home – but this is new. She is wrapped in something so soft and warm and supported by strong arms. That's not so bad really. She could get used to this. A familiar voice murmurs in soothing tones something musical and calming. Her mother, of course. She is safe here, she knows. Somehow she is sure of it. The voice whispers something in her tiny ear, "Welcome to the universe, Os."_

Clara stumbled, the movement carrying her forward. There was a loud slurping like the sound of boots pulling out of thick mud, and she felt like she was rushing towards the surface of a deep pool, the roar of water filling her ears, building into a deafening crescendo. Suddenly she heard a pop, and she hit the floor on hands and knees. Her vision cleared, and she looked up.

"What the hell was that?"

A pair of small black flats walked around to stand in front of her, "I would imagine that was a memory. You walked straight into the bubble when you opened the door." A blue hand reached down to help her stand up. Clara took it gratefully, finding her feet again before taking in her surroundings.

The room they had entered was gigantic, practically a grand hall or old fashioned throne room in size. In appearance, however, it was far from that. The floor was a dazzling white, and was in fact the only source of light for the space. It was bright enough that it could have easily defined and illuminated the far corners of the room. It would have if the walls and ceiling were not such an intense shade of black. They practically pulsed with their chosen hue; the color itself seemed to consume the light around it. The darkness was so complete, in fact, that Clara wasn't positive there were walls at all – the floor might have just been a platform hanging out over a void.

Drifting around the room like so many dancers at a ball were colorfully undulating bubbles of light. They looked a bit like reject crystal balls. Instead of being clear like well refined glass, they were murky and full of imperfections that caused the images inside of them to blur out of focus. This was when Clara realized the orbs held moving representations of different events. Different memories? Probably. She turned to look at the way she had come. Just in front of the door, one of the bubbles hung at just about eye level. Almost as if it had been waiting for her by the door like a faithful pet. She smirked at the thought, then started to turn back when –

"Look out on your left!"

There was a sound like a stone dropping into thick soup, a rush of water like falling into a lake, and a growing crescendo of noise, until

_She is five years old. Her father holds her hand tightly. It hurts, but she knows he doesn't mean it, and she's squeezing his hand just as tightly. She is so excited. Mummy promised to bring her back something really great this time to make up for being gone so long. A full three days! She can hardly believe she hasn't seen her mother in three days. They have been the longest three days of all her five years of life, but any moment now her mother will appear in her TARDIS, just like she promised. Os is not sure why, with a time machine, Mummy can't just leave and come back two seconds after she left, but apparently there are some very grown up rules about TARDIS travel which mean she can't._

_Suddenly the air begins to swirl around them, and a silver cylinder begins to blink in and out of existence a few feet in front of Os and her father. She tugs excitedly on his hand, and he grins down at her. He glances at his watch, "Perfectly on time, as always!"_

_They walk towards the familiar TARDIS. Os is ready to run into her mother's arms the moment she catches sight of her. She wonders why Mummy is still inside her ship. Usually she leaps out as soon as she lands, sweeping her daughter into a big, safe hug as her very first homecoming present._

_The door slides open, and an unfamiliar man steps tentatively out from the ship. He seems nervous. Os is confused. Did Mummy bring a friend home?_

_The stranger approaches her father, slowly, like he isn't sure if he should. She looks up at her father. He has let go of her hand. She is glad of this because his hands are balled into fists. His face has paled drastically, and his jaw is clenched tightly shut. Os can see his lower lip quivering. Fear? It makes her nervous to see him this way. It makes her distrust this stranger almost instantly. Why did Mummy bring this man home if Daddy doesn't like him?_

_The strange man leans in close to her father and whispers something into his ear. Her father closes his eyes as a single tear runs down his cheek. His next breath seems to cause him physical pain, but he does take it and open his eyes. Now it is the other man who looks frightened. Os is very confused, and wants to know what the man said. She is more confused when her father cracks a smile for the other man and pulls him into a bear hug. Relief washes across the stranger's face as he accepts the hug, and when they separate, they are both crying, but also smiling. Her father kisses the man's forehead, just like he kisses Mummy sometimes. Os does not understand anything of what is happening, and is beginning to grow impatient. She pulls on Daddy's robe, "Where's Mummy?"_

_Her father glances down at her, then to the other man. He takes a deep breath, as if getting ready to jump into a pool of water. Kneeling, he pulls his daughter into a hug before turning her to face the newcomer, who is also kneeling now. He begins murmuring to her._

"_Sweet, do you know how only you, your mother, and I know your real name, and only you can tell anyone else?"_

_Os nods. Of course she knew that._

"_Well, there is a very good reason for that. You see, sometimes the people we care about change. Sometimes we don't recognize them by the way they look because they are so different. So we tell our loved ones our names so when they change, they can tell us and we will know who they are. There are other ways to know, but some of them you won't be able to use until you are a little older. Do you understand?"_

_Os nods, "Like Rassilon in my story book."_

"_Exactly. But it's not just in your storybook, darling. Sometimes we, as Time Lords, go through a change called regeneration when our lives are in danger, and we come out looking very different."_

_At last the other man speaks, "But we are still the people we were before at the very core of us. And we care just as much for our loved ones."_

_Os nods again. Yes, she understands this well enough. She isn't entirely sure why the information is important right now, but she understands._

_The other man meets her gaze and holds it. "Your name is Os. I promised you I would bring back something really great this time. Do you want to see what it is?"_

_Os simply stares at the strange man for a moment until the pieces of the puzzle finally snap into place. This man is her mother, regenerated. She understands that fact, but it is difficult to wrap her head around it. Os stares deeply into the man's eyes, suspicious despite the long explanation from her father. This stranger? Her mother? No, that was ridiculous. Her mother had always been so soft. This man looked much harder, and sharper in a way._

_Then she catches sight of something hiding inside his iris. It is something so familiar to her, something she is instinctually tuned to. There is a pattern, a signature of sorts imprinted on the soul of each Time Lord and Lady. They carry with them a small portion of the Time Vortex itself, unchanged and untouched by death or rebirth. This is what allows Time Lords of different regenerations to recognize friends and enemies with a new face. Os had seen the signature in her mother's eyes, and she saw it here in the eyes of this stranger. An inborn Gallifreyan instinct took over at the realization. It was alright. Of course it was alright. All of the tension and worry flooded away from her as she smiled and flung her arms around the familiar stranger, "Mum!"_

The world came rushing back in a haze of colors distorted through glass and a thunderous rumbling. With a _shluuuur-pop!_ she snapped back into the room. The memory that had just snuck up on her continued floating away to her right, unhindered by its passage through her head. The TARDIS giggled, "That was so weird. It jello-ed around your head!"

Clara struggled to regain her sense of the present setting (which was, of course, entirely in her head to begin with. That wasn't helping her ability to grasp her pseudo-reality.) Somehow she managed to steady herself enough to raise a playfully scornful eyebrow at her companion, "Jello-ed?"

A bright red tongue stuck out at her indignantly from between blue lips, but it was followed by a flash of white teeth, "It's a perfectly valid verbification."

"Verbification? You are an eight year old – most highschool students don't know that term!"

"Your point is?"

"You are too smart for your own good." The pair grinned at one another, then the TARDIS flicked her eyes behind Clara; "Duck."

She crouched down quickly and watched the bright orb pass over her head at a leisurely pace, like a blimp over a crowded stadium. When at last it had cleared her, she straightened, keeping an eye out for more colorful globes approaching her position.

Clara shook her head, "This isn't going to work. I don't want ninja thought clouds assaulting me at random. I need some order to this."

Before her sentence had even ended, the orbs in the room seemed to grow agitated, darting about more quickly than before. A thought for their organization occurred to her, and instantly the orbs moved – whizzing across the room. Now they hung above them in the vast darkness like a rolling, churning cloud. In the center of the room, a white pedestal rose out of the floor, flowing upwards in a slick motion. A keyboard morphed out of its smooth surface. Something very much like a search box appeared in the air above this newest addition to the room - a white cursor blinked inside a long box, clearly awaiting input

A satisfied little smile twitched her lips upward. That was more like it. The little girl beside her didn't seem to agree. She pouted, "But they are boring now! It was cool when they were just floating around."

"Yeah, well you weren't the one getting attacked by memories without warning." Clara approached the keyboard, mulling over what to type into the search bar.

"I see whatever you see, Clara." When she bristled at that, the girl quickly added, "I'm not being nosy, but I AM inside your head. It's hard to avoid. Besides, I am an eternal, nigh-omniscient super being. I already know most of this. Experiencing it all firsthand is what appeals to me."

"Since you know so much, miss omniscient, why don't you give me some idea of what to search for?" Clara had intended the comment to be teasing, but the girl looked genuinely thoughtful. Finally she turned to the keyboard. She had to stand on tiptoes and peer over the edge of the pedestal to see where her fingers were on the keys. Slowly words revealed themselves in the text box:

NAME CEREMONY

The little blue hands dropped back down to her sides, and she looked up at Clara. "On Gallifrey, the name you choose is a promise you make. Let's find out what your promise was."


End file.
